Favourite photo stories

Discuss all the girls comics that have appeared over the years. Excellent titles like Bunty, Misty, Spellbound, Tammy and June, amongst many others, can all be remembered here.

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Tammyfan
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Tammyfan »

Goof wrote:
Tammyfan wrote:No matter how good the photography is, a photo story is far more limited in what it can do than a picture story - spooky or sf stories, for example.
I agree, and I think this goes well beyond the photo story’s inability to do the unreal, such as supernatural or fantasy stories. Pat Mills is quite right that they got much better results when they used good models who could project strong emotion convincingly, but he doesn’t mention another problem that was never solved – photo stories simply can’t do action sequences. The action in some of the early stories was ludicrous – in one I’ve seen, the heroine wins a tennis championship by standing stock-still in the middle of the court and sticking her racket out like a traffic signal. Although later examples seemed to get a little better, the only real way round the problem was to limit action to the bare minimum, but that meant that they also had to limit the type of story they could use.
And some of the props they used were ludicrous too. In one Girl 2 story, “Splat!”, the titular alien looks like just what he is - some weird toy made out of rubber. That didn’t stop him coming back for a sequel, though.

In ballet stories I do think the photostory had an advantage because they got in real-life people who could do the ballet poses correctly and gracefully, whereas in drawn ballet stories this was not always the case. Either the artist could not draw ballet correctly or did not have the right style for it, or both.

Phoenix
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Phoenix »

Tammyfan wrote:In ballet stories I do think the photostory had an advantage because they got in real-life people who could do the ballet poses correctly and gracefully, whereas in drawn ballet stories this was not always the case. Either the artist could not draw ballet correctly or did not have the right style for it, or both.
Your need for authenticity in the pictorial presentations, Briony, has rarely crossed my mind because, as I have said previously, I'm only interested in the stories. There are inevitably some artists whose work is mildly irritating but I basically see right through it or past it in order to enjoy the fiction. However, where my lack of an insider's knowledge of ballet is concerned, several months ago I bought a kind of explanatory book about it on eBay called Life At The Royal Ballet School by Camilla Jessel, so I now definitely know quite a lot more about it.

Tammyfan
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Joined: 23 Aug 2012, 10:41

Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Tammyfan »

Phoenix wrote:
Tammyfan wrote:In ballet stories I do think the photostory had an advantage because they got in real-life people who could do the ballet poses correctly and gracefully, whereas in drawn ballet stories this was not always the case. Either the artist could not draw ballet correctly or did not have the right style for it, or both.
Your need for authenticity in the pictorial presentations, Briony, has rarely crossed my mind because, as I have said previously, I'm only interested in the stories. There are inevitably some artists whose work is mildly irritating but I basically see right through it or past it in order to enjoy the fiction. However, where my lack of an insider's knowledge of ballet is concerned, several months ago I bought a kind of explanatory book about it on eBay called Life At The Royal Ballet School by Camilla Jessel, so I now definitely know quite a lot more about it.
If there was one thing I could never stand in girls' comics it was badly drawn ballet.

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colcool007
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by colcool007 »

Tammyfan wrote:If there was one thing I could never stand in girls' comics it was badly drawn ballet.
To be honest, that works across the genre, nothing is quicker at killing emotional investment in a story than a badly drawn pose that is impossible to replicate in reality.
I started to say something sensible but my parents took over my brain!

Phoenix
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Phoenix »

Tammyfan wrote:If there was one thing I could never stand in girls' comics it was badly drawn ballet.
I appreciate that but how had you learned to recognise 'badly drawn ballet'? I'm assuming that it is either because you have been to watch a reasonable number of live performances or because you have at some point been taught to dance ballet yourself.

Tammyfan
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Tammyfan »

Phoenix wrote:
Tammyfan wrote:If there was one thing I could never stand in girls' comics it was badly drawn ballet.
I appreciate that but how had you learned to recognise 'badly drawn ballet'? I'm assuming that it is either because you have been to watch a reasonable number of live performances or because you have at some point been taught to dance ballet yourself.
Both really.

Phoenix
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Re: Favourite photo stories

Post by Phoenix »

Thank you for the clarification.

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